TUNING UP
Orchestras and other performers look for ways to return to the stage
The staff have been diligently disinfecting all the equipment. Temperature checks have been completed on everybody.
No — this is not the scene in a hospital operating theatre, but backstage at a concert hall.
When the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan came out on stage to play on a recent Sunday night, it fired the starting gun for concert life to resume. After months of the coronavirus lockdown, here at last was an orchestra playing in front of a live audience in a concert hall.
“The situation is quite good here now in Taiwan,” says Lydia Wenchen Kuo, executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra (Taiwan Philharmonic). “The government is keen for everyone to get back to life as normal. They announced the regulations … and we were able to proceed quickly. It is a moment of pride that we could share a live concert again with people around the world thanks to our online streaming.”
The short notice meant that this first concert was already planned with 30 musicians and an audience of 500 in a 2,000-capacity hall. By mid-june, though, it is hoped an orchestra of 70 or 80 will be playing to 1,000 people.
On the face of it, the omens are good. Other venues and festivals around the world are promising public events in the near future. The venerable Musikverein in Vienna will reopen this month with concerts, though with only 100 in the audience. The Ravenna festival in Italy will start with an open-air concert in late June. The Rossini opera festival in Pesaro will operate with the audience seated only in the theatre’s boxes.
And yet, at the same time, other music organizations are announcing further cancellations and even closures.
Who is right? There is so much uncertainty about how the coronavirus pandemic will proceed, and whether it will return, that no performing arts institution is in a place where it can confidently take decisions for the future.
For many groups, limiting audience size would put a strain on finances.
Germany is in a relatively good place. The government has issued clear guidelines about protecting the health of performers and audiences, and generous state support means the arts are not on the edge of a precipice.
“There are still many concerns,” says Andrea Zietzschmann, general manager of the Berlin Philharmonic. “We are looking at a September or October start and will have to be very flexible about taking decisions at short notice. Scientists have stipulated spacing within the orchestra of 1.5 metres between the strings, and two metres between the wind, which means 32-37 players, though the number might rise later to 50 or 60. In the audience, we can only have 400 maximum in the main hall, which is an (unsustainable) situation.”
In the U.K., the current thinking is that all social distancing at indoor public events should be set at two metres, which makes a big difference to how many people can be present. It is no surprise that the Association of British Orchestras is lobbying the government for flexibility on this point.
At the giant Royal Albert Hall, the outlook is daunting. “How can you perform ballet with social distancing or put on Hello, Dolly! with a chorus line two metres apart?” says Craig Hassall, chief executive officer. “This ruling limits us to 30 per cent attendance in the Royal Albert Hall. The result is that 80 per cent of the promoters who would have been hiring the hall disappeared immediately, and that is the same for every hall that has no public funding. We have lost (about $14 million) in income since March, plus (almost $7 million) on ticket refunds. We give a big tick to government for the job-retention scheme. That has been an absolute lifeline.”
It is not surprising to hear that Hassall has made common cause with a group of other arts organizations in London that are in the same boat, including the Old Vic, the Royal Academy and Shakespeare’s Globe. He calls them the “unfunded alliance,” since they all depend on getting people in through the doors.
Most North American concert halls are in the same precarious position. In New York, it will be the state governor who decides when concert halls can open and Carnegie Hall has to sit and wait for the go-ahead. It will take two months to get the hall up and running, so there is a rolling plan of possible opening dates — October, or January, or April, whenever the signal comes.
“The finances look horrific,” says Clive Gillinson, executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall. “I was here for the financial crash of 2008-09 and we came through that without taking a loss. This season we will have a loss of $8 million even with the furloughs and salary reductions, and it would have been $27 million if we had not transformed the business. There will also have to be a reduction of activity in 2021 because the impact will be continuing. The board has to decide how to deal with the deficit, whether to clear it quickly or spread it over more years.”
Even in Berlin the financial situation is not rosy. In the first month of the lockdown, the foundation that runs the philharmonic dropped about $2.5 million from losses on ticket sales and renting out the halls.
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How can you perform ballet with social distancing or put on Hello, Dolly! with a chorus line two metres apart?